PRINCIPLES OF A SOUND PERSONNEL POLICY

By S. R. MOHAN DAS

Summary

S. R. Mohan Das, Director of the Industrial Relations Institute of India, sets out the architecture of an effective personnel policy for industrial organisations. Adapted from a talk delivered at the Forum of Free Enterprise on 26 September 1975 and issued by the Forum as a booklet in March 1976, the text distinguishes material from human resources and argues that under-developed societies err in assuming that sheer population can be slotted into the industrial system without a prior ‘quality transformation’. Personnel management, on Mohan Das’s account, is the integrated discipline of generating, selecting, inducting, training, utilising and severing human resources so they can function as an integrated team across the work and non-work spheres of the enterprise.

The argumentative spine is a typology of three interest groups inside the organisation — owners, employees with management responsibilities, and workmen — plus three external constituencies (government, suppliers, clients). Each carries partisan claims, and the personnel function exists to mediate them as a continuous, multi-level, power-balancing relationship rather than a litigatory or peace-keeping exercise. Mohan Das insists that human resources be treated as scarce investment, not cost; that workers be approached as ‘quality adult personalities’, not dependent children; and that role relationships replace the feudal ‘master–servant’ or ‘command and obedience’ model with one of explicit mutuality and reciprocity.

The core of the booklet is a six-point policy framework. Industrial relations objectives must be performance-oriented rather than merely peace-oriented; relationships must be organisational and role-based rather than individualistic; modern industrial work demands mutuality and discretion, not blind obedience; the relationship is continuous and multi-level from shop floor to top management; industrial relations function as an apprenticeship in leadership and problem-processing; and the system should convert conflict into a game between strong opponents rather than guerrilla warfare aimed at liquidating a ‘hated enemy’. Mohan Das closes by insisting that line supervisors and managers — not just specialist personnel or legal officers — be involved, and that the policy include a time-bound grievance procedure and two-way communication channels.

The Forum appends its own 1957 ‘Code of Conduct’ as an editorial supplement, framing producers’, employers’, management’s, professional men’s and citizens’ obligations in the private-enterprise order. The booklet opens with an epigraph from Eugene Black urging acceptance of private enterprise as ‘an affirmative good’ and closes with the Forum’s standing A. D. Shroff epigraph on free enterprise’s permanence.

Key points

• Personnel management is reframed as human-resources management: an integrated discipline covering generation, selection, induction, utilisation, training, development and severance of quality manpower.

• Under-developed societies’ assumption that quantitative population can be automatically absorbed into the industrial system is challenged; population must undergo a ‘quality transformation’ before it becomes usable labour.

• Three internal interest groups (owners, managerial employees, workmen) and three external constituencies (government, suppliers, clients) must be continuously reconciled by a sound personnel policy.

• Human resources are scarce and should be treated as investment, not cost — a managerial axiom Mohan Das uses to attack consumption-oriented, control-based approaches.

• Each human resource carries three identities — socio-cultural, occupational and collective/professional — and good industrial relations refuse to confuse one with the other.

• A six-point policy framework: performance-oriented objectives; role-based organisational behaviour; mutuality and reciprocity replacing the master–servant model; continuous, multi-level relationships; industrial relations as leadership apprenticeship; and conflict converted from guerrilla warfare into a game.

• Line supervisors and managers — not just specialist personnel or legal staff — must own the industrial-relations exercise, supported by a time-bound grievance procedure and regular two-way communication.

• The Forum of Free Enterprise frames the booklet with its 1957 Code of Conduct for producers, employers, management, professionals and citizens, anchoring Mohan Das’s HR doctrine inside an explicit private-enterprise ethic.

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